Sensitivity
by Red Ranger Kei
Summary: Ruka's got a knack for knowing what people are thinking, to put it particularly mildly. Of course, that doesn't mean she can always make sense of it. Gen.


**Authorly preamble or something**: Set slightly in advance of the showdown against Rido. I think this is one of those things where you see what you want to see, pairing-wise; depending on how I tilt my head I can see Ruka/Kaname, Aido/Kaname, Ruka/Aido, Aido/Yuuki, or no pairing at all. One wasn't intended, but don't let that stop you if you have a pairing of choice. ;)

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**Sensitivity**

Ruka had a knack for knowing what people were thinking; this is how she thought of it. But to call it a 'knack' could be misleading — intuition had nothing to do with it. Quite simply, she could hear people's thoughts. But to simplify to that degree is again misleading. It was not as if she could hear streams of thought like an omnipresent, never ceasing babble, eliminating surprises and guesswork. Rather, she could hear only when thoughts were thought 'loudly'. (Again these were the personalized terms she had come to think of it in.) When a topic, given form as specific words, was attached a particular intensity of emotion or concentration, she could hear it like a word whispered aloud.

Over time she had learned the ins and outs of her ability, identifying the faint tonal qualities that identified these audible thoughts as distinct from actual speech. Along with this she had learned to tone it out, little different from the ticking of a clock. It was there if she felt inclined to listen for it, but otherwise it passed through her consciousness without her taking any notice. In one ear and out the other, so to speak.

Sometimes she would pause to take note of the 'loud' thoughts of those around her, and sometimes she would ask herself if it was like cheating. In the end she would typically conclude that it was no different than having a particular knack for reading expressions, or an ear for gossip. Anyway, they shouldn't think things so loudly if they didn't' want somebody to catch on. They were typically frivolous and unimportant things, at least in terms of importance to her; they gave Ruka a kind of superior amusement. She could take a quick tally of which Night Class boys were most popular among the Day Class girls simply by paying attention when she passed a group of them. (The occasional terms of glowing admiration or bitter jealousy that would turn up when they spotted her certainly did no harm to Ruka's ego.) Even when she made a conscious effort to ignore it, the stress and panic that inevitably made itself known on test days was sometimes enough to strike her with a migraine.

And of course she became familiar with the recurring concerns of the members of the Night Class. Shiki would occasionally intone with no small measure of apathy, "I'm hungry." Akatsuki's train of thought had the tendency to summarize itself as a tired sigh. Kaname was far too level-headed and calm to have his own concerns made known so readily, and when they did manifest they tended to centre around the headmaster's daughter. Finding this vexing, Ruka never intentionally listened for his thoughts, and when they came the specific words never registered in her mind. Only the gentle, dulcet tone left any mark on her mind, calming and always welcome. Aido, on the other hand, seemed to think with a great deal of emotional intensity a large percentage of the time. Ruka took this as a general way of wearing his heart on his sleeve, and sure enough very little of what concerned Aido would not be readily apparent to anybody around him who had known him for more than two minutes. Naturally a great deal of what seemed to consume Aido's thoughts was Kaname, and to hear Aido's voice whine "Kaname-sama!" in the back of Ruka's mind was precisely like the tick of a clock: pure white noise.

It was precisely because of this consistency and the derivative tendency to tune out what she'd already heard countless times before that she was all the more likely to notice variance, deviation, and change. Not to say that Aido had no thoughts other than Kaname; in fact because of his fervour and short attention span Ruka was used to all the mental clutter he unknowingly sent her way. For his attention to be all over the place was expected, but all the same one day Ruka realized she'd been hearing Kaname's name in Aido's voice with decreasing frequency. Uncertain what to make of it, she was at first cautiously pleased; although she had long since grown used to it, it took little effort to recall when she had found so precious a name whined so frequently somewhat annoying. (Needless to say the fact that the very same tended to be coming from Aido's mouth most of the time only served to compound the issue. Sometimes Kaname's idealistic goal of harmony among Cross Academy's students was all that kept Ruka from punching Aido in the mouth in a most unladylike fashion.) What did come to annoy her, at least partially to her surprise, was that his attention to the headmaster's daughter seemed to be growing in relation to his decreased focus on Kaname.

What she found to bother her the most about this was the incomprehensibility of it all. After all, just because she could hear his thoughts didn't mean she could tell what he was thinking.


End file.
